I don't have enough experience with 50 BMG rifles to tell you for certain if it's still safe to shoot. In the case of the FAL, it was fine afterwards. I can't imagine it would not be fine, but again 50 BMG is a different animal to other rounds, and I just don't have enough experience. The safe route would be having it inspected by a competent gunsmith who knows 50 BMG rifles.Well I had thought in a bolt gun as opposed to a semi auto it was less an issue about shooting mil surp ammo but my initial thought when it wouldn't easily eject was i had a much tighter chamber than the machine guns the round was designed for. I have never experienced this before with my smaller magnum rifles (.300 win mag) and someone locally even stated the twist rate in this barrel could be different than the m2 that usually this round is loaded for. Also is my gun safe to shoot further or is it unsafe now that its had this overpressure event?
Funny enough 50 BMG is really not specced to as high as a chamber pressure as you would imagine. I believe it's specced at around 54,000 PSI by CIP, which usually spec chambers higher than SAAMI. M855A1 EPR 5.56 has a higher chamber pressure than that. That 6.8x51 has an even higher pressure at around 80,000 PSI. The thing that makes 50 so potentially dangerous is despite having a moderate chamber pressure, there is still a lot of explosive energy, so any change in the tolerances of the chamber very well can lead to either a pipe bomb, or a skewering by bolt incident.